Investing Up Front: Preschool Matters

With all the attention focused on equity in education, it's amazing
how little discussion has been devoted to the very youngest students
and their learning environments. Yet researchers at TC's National
Center for Children and Families and elsewhere have found that the
pre-K and kindergarten years are the most crucial time for engendering
essential skills such as language development, basic counting,
socialization and more. And as we follow children of all socioeconomic
backgrounds across the years, one bottom-line truth is apparent: early
childhood education is more likely to pay off, in terms of education
and employment later on, than educational interventions done in the
elementary or high school years.

To connect the dots more
specifically between quality early education and equity: good early
care and a nurturing, stimulating environment can, in the long term,
result in gains in school achievement test scores and graduation rates,
as well as reductions in grade repeat/failure, special education
placement, juvenile delinquency and, sometimes, teen pregnancy.
High-quality early education programs have been shown to benefit
children at the most risk of inadequate school readiness: those whose
mothers have not completed high school, whose families are poor, whose
mothers suffer from depression or who have low psychological resources.
Evidence indicates that such programs have been able to reduce the
school readiness gaps between children who are economically
disadvantaged and those who are not, and that they also have the
potential to reduce gaps in outcomes between racial groups.

Although
it sounds simplistic, it's worth noting that the foremost indicators of
excellence in a preschool are the qualifications of its teachers. We in
the Teachers College community can be justly proud that our institution
is among the beacons lighting the way in this respect. But as members
of a society with high expectations of our young, we must also advocate
for redressing the national trends of low wages, teachers who are
under-prepared to work with three- to six-year-olds, and legislators
who often give low priority to early education. It's simple logic: if
we don't bring children to the starting gate fully prepared for the
race, they're going to run behind. In those critical early years of
human development when our children develop a sense of themselves,
providing well thought out, child-centered learning in a supportive
environment is the soundest long-term investment a society can
make.

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is Co-Director of the National
Center for Children and Families, and the Virginia and Leonard Marx
Professor of Child Development and Education at Teachers College.